Sharpening your theory of change

- "If you don't know where you're going, "any road will get you there." This is one of my favorite quotes from Lewis Carroll. A theory of change is like a roadmap that helps guide you as you embark on your journey to change the world. Developing a successful theory of change involves specifically articulating what you aspire to achieve and mapping out your assumptions for how you will achieve it. The process actually begins with crafting your vision, which I talk about in other parts of this course. Then your theory of change continues with a detailed explanation of the intended impact you aim to achieve, and defines the specific outcomes that your organization will accomplish in order to advance that larger vision. Essentially your theory of change should start with a definition of your intended impact and then work backward to identify everything that needs to happen to bring about that outcome. Now theories of change can take all different types of visual forms. Sometimes it's depicted as a logic model with a linear progression of activities and inputs that lead to outputs and outcomes. Other theories of change look like a systems map which can reflect the complex interplay between cross-sector actors that might impact your issue. I've included a few diagrams in the exercise files that depict some of these different approaches. In developing your theory of change, you identify the key players involved in your issue, as well as others whom if they got involved could contribute to achieving the outcomes you desire. You map out what all the players are doing, including your own nonprofit, and what needs to be done differently in order to achieve the intended impact. Let's look at the theory of change for one high impact nonprofit, Teach For America. Teach For America recruits recent college grads to go into low income school districts and teach for two years, with the ultimate goal of inspiring them to become lifelong advocates for ed reform. Teach For America's vision is one day, all children will have equal access to an excellent education. Now here's what TFA's theory of change looks like. As you'll see, this theory of change centers on two key elements, first immediate impact in individual classrooms and second, longterm systemic impact across public schools nationally. It's really important to recognize both aspects of TFA's theory of change. Because if Teach For America's only goal was to put teachers in underserved classroom, then they would recruit a certain kind of student to fill those requirements. But it's vision is bigger. It aspires for its alumni to become lifelong leaders in education reform. So for instance, many TFA alum go on after two years of teaching to become leaders of companies, they run for political office, they lead government agencies. Others launch new nonprofits such as charter schools and other types of innovative education groups. The founders of KIPP academies and NewSchools Venture Fund were all TFA alums. The idea here is that TFA alums will affect wide scale change at systemic levels over the course of their lives, rather than only make an impact within the classrooms while they're teaching. As a result of this theory of change, Teach For America has actually modified it's recruitment model over the years, so that today it now targets not only the would-be teachers, but it recruits student government presidents, football team captains, valedictorians, other campus notables who posses the potential to ascend to leadership positions across a range of careers. Teach For America's ultimate goal is that one day a US president will be an alumni of the program. How much systemic change could you create then? Now as you develop your own theory of change, here are some questions to consider. Who do you seek to benefit? What are you trying to achieve specifically? How will you and the others in your field make that happen? And which specific activities, strategies, and resources will you need to get there? And remember, a theory of change is not simply a document that you alone write. A successful theory of change is constructed in concert with leaders within and outside of your nonprofit, who can help you figure out where you want to go and choose the roads that are most likely to get you there.